Islamabad: Opposition PML(N) of Nawaz Sharif and slain former premier Benazir Bhutto's PPP were today in a neck-and-neck race to emerge as the largest party in Pakistan's crucial parliamentary elections, dealing a heavy blow to President Pervez Musharraf's main ally PML(Q).

With results out for 179 seats, the PML-N, whose two top leaders former premier Sharif and his brother Shahbaz were barred from contesting the polls by the Election Commission due to previous convictions, bagged 56 seats.

Elections were held yesterday for 269 of the 272 sets with polling being countermanded in three constituencies.

The PPP, which was widely expected to sweep the polls on the back of a sympathy wave generated by the assassination of its chief Benazir Bhutto during the election campaign, also had won 56 seats. 

The ruling PML-Q, which managed just 21 sets was virtually routed with many of party's stalwarts including former premier and party chief Chaudhy Shujaat Hussain, former foreign minister Khurshid M Kasuri and former railway minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, a close aide of President Pervez Musharraf defeated by their PPP and PML-N opponents.

Ahmed was defeated by PML-N leaders Makhdoom Javed Hashmi and Haneef Abbasi in the two parliamentary constituencies he had contested in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, considered a bastion of the former railway minister.
Source : PTI